Nebraska Books

As a teacher and researcher whose focus includes Asian education, I've always wondered about the role of sports in K-12 Asian schools, particularly those in Taiwan. With Taiwan's tremendous emphasis on academics, I wondered how it was that Little League Baseball could thrive there. In "Playing in Isolation," Junwei Yu offers readers insight not only into this question, but also into the entire history of the sport in Taiwan. Baseball came to the island with the Japanese and became very popular in Taiwan even in the first half of the 20th century, especially among the island's native population. Yu describes how baseball offered a cultural and political outlet for these people, as well as how the ruling KMT party gradually co-opted the sport for political purposes in the 1970s. Also describe in fascinating detail are the corruption scandals associated with sport. This is a terrific read for sports fans, political buffs, and sociologists.

This was the key early (1951) study of Pound's poetry and Cantos upon which all subsequent studies built. The author found so much that sheds light on Pound's poetry from reading Pound's prose, at the time lost pretty much in out of print books and gone periodicals. Now, however, Pound's prose is pretty readily available in book form from New Directions and this through Kenner's pioneer work does make Pound's poems and Cantos far more comprehensible.

Dr. Christopher S. DeRosa of Monmouth University provides an important contribution to the study of civil/military relations with this first ever published monograph on Army Troop Information and Education (I&E). While the services during the thirty years covered in his investigation always described themselves as "explainers" rather than "persuaders," DeRosa claims that the management of opinion always lay at the heart of each program. (xi) The basic problem facing the Army, however, was "how to go about indoctrinating soldiers with an exclusively tailored set of opinions when the freedom to hold and express different opinions stood so high among the propagandists' and soldiers' core political values." (14)

DeRosa begins his examination of WWII political indoctrination efforts with an examination of a Guide to the Use of Information Materials. In it the Army urged its officers to remember that the first principle of American information was truth as it outlined the themes and methods needed for wartime propaganda. "Indoctrination of Hatred" should be considered a practical training issue and not a moral one, according to the authors of the guide, in order to prepare the soldier to not just be willing but to be even "anxious to work bodily destruction upon the enemies of his country."(16) The author provides a thorough analysis of Capra's Why We Fight series that includes particularly valuable responses to the series from veterans compiled by the Military History Institute at Carlisle Barracks in Pennsylvania.

The richest material is found in DeRosa's anaylsis of military political indoctrination during the early Cold War. According to the author, during this period when the American public embraced a peacetime military of unprecedented size, the army expanded its information programs to not only communicate with its personnel but to also include civilians. He sees the service's attempts to influence soldier opinion during the Korean Conflict as relatively modest. But following the war, DeRosa claims that political indoctrination efforts increased dramatically as the Army reacted defensively to criticism that it had done too little to prepare its recruits for ideological warfare. The author's careful survey of the era's anti-communist materials, which often were laced with religious undertones, is truly the book's greatest strength. In no other source will students of the cold war find such a complete analysis. DeRosa's chapter on Maj. Gen. Edwin A. Walker's notorious "Pro-Blue" program that incorporated materials from the John Birch Society is the best treatment of the subject that I have seen. The author claims that the Army had great difficulty during the Vietnam War indoctrinating its men and women because the public, troubled that the conduct of the war did not reflect their values, rejected the "comparatively superficial anticommunist indoctrination that justified the war."(256)

Well written and with an impressive bibliography, I highly recommend Political Indoctrination in the U.S. Army: From WWII to the Vietnam War, to any student of the history of the Cold War or scholars interested in American civil/military relations. It well deserves 5 stars. Dr. Lori Bogle, United States Naval Academy

Loveman & Davies are pioneers. They establish a trail that is difficult to overlook. I know of no book in the nation that covers so much ground with such a wide array of experts. This is clearly an important book for anyone who wants to understand the Military in Latin America.

Belgum, a University of Texas German professor, writes an excellent account of the Gartenlaube. UT Austin is known for excellence in German Studies, and this book is a good reason why. Belgum is a righter of excellence.

"Portrait of America" was a popular video documentary series in the mid-eighties, a product of collaboration between Superstation/Turner Broadcasting Corporation and Ambrose Home Video. Well-researched, each video is divided into 5 segments covering most unique historical, social, and cultural aspects of each state. Watching such an interesting documentary, each being roughly about 50 minutes long, without advertisements and other interruptions seems to be a privilege in these days!

I absolutely love this book and I am just reading it through for the second time. The grammar and format take a bit to get used to but the descriptions of her time homesteading are just fascinating. I am encouraged by her stories of living in a sod house and raising children there. She perseveres and then finds her "voice" in the politics of the time. Wonderful read!

This book is great if you want to know about the gold rushes of America. She organized it in good ways to keep the different aspects of the rushes interesting.

Along with Paul Schullery, who not long ago penned the insightful and important Searching for Yellowstone, and Richard West Sellars, author of the definitive history of science in the U.S. National Park System titled Preserving Nature in the National Parks, Jim Pritchard has established himself as one of the premier observers on the often perilous collision course between science and politics. While Pritchard's Preserving Yellowstone's Natural Conditions: Politics and the Perception of Nature is destined to become required reading for university environmental studies programs‹as well it should‹it is a lively and entertaining read for anyone who loves our national parks, but in particular the mother of parks, Yellowstone. He deserves praise for a fine piece of work.

True story of Ms. Strait's childhood in 1914+ Nebraska while her parents were trying to comply with the provisions of receiving free land (160 acres - no mule mentioned). Fascinating story.